The AMD Radeon™ ProRender plug-ins for Autodesk® 3ds Max®, Maya®, and Blender™ have been updated with a new Material Library, UI improvements, and some key new features.

Radeon ProRender is our fast, easy, and incredible physically-based rendering engine, integrated into Maxon Cinema 4D™ R20 and available as a free plug-in for many popular digital content-creation applications.

Along with the just-released plug-in for PTC Creo® and Real-Time Viewport Ray Tracing in the Radeon ProRender SDK for developers, we’ve also updated our plug-ins for 3ds Max, Maya, and Blender. Read on to learn more about what’s new.

Updated Material Library

Our Radeon ProRender 3ds Max, Maya, and Blender plug-ins have always included a material library optimized for use with our renderer and now we’re both updating and separating it into its own installer on macOS® and Windows®.

We’ve added many new materials, expanding the total number included to 300+, and all the materials now use the Radeon ProRender Uber shader so they’re easy to use as starting points for your own materials.

The separate installer means that you only need to install the material library once even if you use multiple Radeon ProRender plug-ins, and this also makes it easier for us to update materials independently from the plug-ins.

On Linux®, our updated Blender plug-in still comes with an integrated material library and it has been updated with the new Uber shader-based materials. We do plan to offer a separate installer for Linux at a later date.

Improved Radeon ProRender Settings UI

Along with the abovementioned new material library, our plug-ins for 3ds Max and Maya have some big quality of life improvements made to the Radeon ProRender UI, with the render settings reorganized to make Radeon ProRender easier to use. For example, the rendering device and samples can be separately set for viewport and final rendering.

Sequence Rendering and Out-of-Core Texture Cache

One of the most asked for features by our users is support for sequence rendering to create animations, and we’ve added this to our plug-ins for Maya and Blender. Additionally, we’ve added and out-of-core texture cache settings to improve the viewport rendering performance of scenes with many textures.

More Updates to the Plug-In for Blender

Together with the updates above, we’ve also added quite a few additional new features to our plug-in for Blender. To start, we’ve made viewport rendering significantly more responsive by displaying viewports natively in OpenGL®. We’ve also added per-light AOVs, allowing you to separate lighting by type to independently control light values when compositing your render.

Lastly, we’ve added nodes for procedural UV mapping to make texture mapping of basic objects simpler and the Uber shader has been updated with “sheen” settings making it easier to render cloth in Radeon ProRender.

Radeon ProRender Development Roadmap

In addition to the updated plug-ins, we are also publishing our development roadmap for Radeon ProRender, listing the features scheduled to be added in the next quarter. This includes hair support, volumes support, and machine learning denoising. Of course, anything shown on this roadmap is subject to change without prior notice.

(click to enlarge)

Available Now

The updated Radeon ProRender plug-ins for 3ds Max, Maya1, and Blender are available now. For more information about all the new features, along with a list of issues that have been fixed, check out the release notes for the 3ds Max, Maya, and Blender plug-ins and download them from the link below.

Alexander Blake-Davies, Software Product Marketing Specialist for Professional Graphics at AMD’s Radeon Technology Group. His/her postings are his/her own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied. GD-5

Footnotes:

Updates and new features not available in the AMD Radeon™ ProRender for Maya® plug-in for Linux®

AMD had the opportunity to participate at the Autodesk University conference last week in Las Vegas from the 13thuntil the 15thof November.

Autodesk University is a yearly conference, hosted by Autodesk, which connects more than 10,000 professionals from various industries across Construction, Manufacturing, Architecture, Engineering and Digital Content Creation. During the four days of learning, networking and knowledge sharing, AU was a great opportunity to showcase AMD’s strong commitment to professionals in these industries - and to engage with the broader Autodesk end-user community.

AMD’s participation at AU was co-sponsored with Dell - a longtime, valued partner in the AEC and Design & Manufacturing technology marketplace. AMD’s team ran product demos and presentations in Dell’s booth to showcase the strong value propositions of Dell/AMD-powered workstations for professional workflows.

Jamie Gwilliam, AEC Industry Lead at AMD, led a masterclass titled “The Catalysts for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.” which offered a fresh, global perspective of how various related technologies are rapidly changing modern AEC projects. A 30-minute workflow and technology presentations were also given throughout the day by the AMD Radeon Pro team that spoke about Radeon Pro WX workstation family & Dell Precision products.

AMD experts ran several technical workflow demonstrations to showcase how AMD Radeon™ Pro-equipped graphics workstations are driving innovation and unparalleled application interactivity during “GPU multitasking” scenarios such as concurrent 3D modeling, final rendering and video editing, where AMD Radeon™ Pro equipped workstations delivered powerful, robust acceleration for the range of Autodesk’s toolsets. This demo was conducted for AMD’s technology partners and customers to highlight the dramatic differences in GPU multitasking user efficiency when comparing two identical Dell Precision 7820 workstations – one built with AMD Radeon™ Pro WX 9100 graphics, and the second with an Nvidia Quadro P5000 graphic card. The demo clearly showed how AMD’s asynchronous compute capabilities dramatically improved user interactivity and productivity during heavy mixed workloads while running all applications at the same time such as Revit®, 3ds Max®, Enscape™, and Adobe® Premiere® Pro at the same time.

Other notable technology demos included the following Dell hardware configurations and use cases including the newest release of Radeon™ ProRender (2.3.403) running within Autodesk® 3ds Max® 2019.2, Autodesk® Revit®, Autodesk® VRED™, Autodesk® Inventor® and Enscape™3D:

AMD was also an official sponsor of the AR/VR meetup in the Forge Quad area that was a great opportunity to allow attendees to get practical, real-world guidance on VR and AR from our experts. Booth visitors had the chance to try out theVRexperience and engage with the demos for a chance to win a Radeon™ Pro WX 7100 graphics card.

Another collaboration within the show was at the BOXX Technologies booth where a chrome APEXX T3 workstation was displayed powered by the 2nd generation AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper 2990WX CPU to demo Autodesk® Revit® & V-Ray.

BOXX Technologies also showedanAPEXX Neutrino T workstation featuring AMD Radeon™ Pro WX 7100 graphics and a 32-core AMD® Ryzen™ Threadripper™ 2990WX , with capacity for up to four Radeon™ Pro graphics cards along with highly configurable memory and hard drives options to run a wide range of workloads from CAD, rendering, and visual effects (VFX), proving itself to be a well-balanced configuration for a variety of professional use cases.

LUXX Studios has only been around for 12 years, but it has already made a huge impact in Hollywood, providing visual effects work for large tentpole movies such as White House Down and Independence Day: Resurgence. Christian Haas and Andrea Block, founders of LUXX Studios, has continued building upon their successes, and is on their way to completing their very first full-length, animated feature titled “Manou the Swift”, an Ugly-Ducking-meets-Romeo-and-Juliet tale of an orphaned swift raised by seagulls, voiced by Kate Winslet and Willem Dafoe.

An Inside Look into LUXX Studio’s First Animated Movie

One of the biggest challenges for small, independent studios like LUXX is budget. Large, established players in the business can throw as much as $100 million or more at an animated film. LUXX has a budget of €8 million ($9.5 million USD), roughly 1/10 the budget typically allocated for a major animated production. They need to find efficiencies wherever they can so that they can make the film look amazing without breaking the bank.

This is where AMD comes in to the story. In production, LUXX utilizes Autodesk® 3ds Max®, Chaosgroup® V-Ray®, and Foundry’s® Nuke® along with several off-the-shelf plugins to assist with fluid and hair simulations. Such complex simulations can place a heavy load on a system, so to speed up their workflow, LUXX turned to AMD’s Ryzen™ Threadripper™ 1950X CPU and AMD Radeon™ Pro WX 7100 professional graphics card to help accelerate their content.

They saw an immediate difference upon using their new AMD powered workstations. Not only were artists able to complete their shots faster, they were able to complete them better. The extra time saved allowed them to try different versions of the same shot, allowing more creativity to flow, and producing a better film as an end result.

Manou the Swift Teaser Trailer

One other area where LUXX is leveraging the power of AMD is on their rendering side. LUXX’s previous rendering solution was a dual Intel Xeon based processor. The dual Intel Xeon E5-2620 CPUs took five hours to render a close-up of Manou, but when they switched their rendering to a single AMD Ryzen 7 1800X, the rendering time fell to under two hours per frame. This increase in power even enabled LUXX to reinstate shots that it had previously dropped on the grounds that they were too time-consuming to render.

Thanks to the stellar performance of AMD Radeon Pro professional graphics and AMD Ryzen and Ryzen Threadripper CPUs, LUXX Studios is completing their first animated feature faster and to a higher standard of quality than it thought possible. Read more about the benefits that AMD provides to LUXX Studios via the link below and be sure to check out Manou the Swift this autumn in a theater near you.

Warren Eng is a Product Marketing Manager for professional graphics at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied. GD-5

AMD has just announced the Radeon™ Pro WX 8200 workstation graphics card, delivering the best workstation graphics performance for under $10001. This new graphics card from AMD is based on the advanced “Vega” graphics architecture2 and comes equipped with specs and features to help accelerate your most demanding workloads. This includes incredibly fast cutting-edge HBM2 memory, up to 512 GB/s memory bandwidth, 4x DisplayPort 1.4 HDR Ready outputs with support for up to 4x 4K displays or a single 8K display and the performance needed to drive more demanding graphics workloads like virtual reality or photorealistic rendering.

There are several reasons why you should choose Radeon™ Pro WX 8200 over competing workstation and consumer graphics. According to a QA Consultants report commissioned by AMD, Radeon™ Pro delivers “the most stable drivers”3, enabling users to get the most productivity from their workstation. The Radeon™ Pro WX 8200 also includes certifications and optimizations on many of today’s most popular professional applications, which means you get the performance, stability and professional features enabled to drive your designs to completion.

When it comes to performance, the Radeon™ Pro WX 8200 workstation graphics card is no slouch. There are several instances where this card beats out the competition, including the more expensive Nvidia Quadro P5000. For example, Radeon™ Pro WX 8200 graphics’ rendering performance on Blender Cycles is up to 20% faster than the P5000 and up to 30% faster than the P4000 running the same test4. The Radeon™ Pro WX 8200 graphics also delivers greater performance in applications like Foundry’s Nuke, Adobe Premiere Pro, and Autodesk Maya, than NVIDIA Quadro P4000 and P50005. Many designers are also moving to VR to visualize their workflows and the Radeon™ Pro WX 8200 graphics delivers outstanding performance in VR, achieving higher scores in VRMark’s Cyan Room test than the competition.

Fig. 1. VRMark Cyan Room Benchmark. See footnote #6 below.

One of the most impressive advantages the Radeon™ Pro WX 8200 brings to the table over the competition is its multitasking capabilities. This is where the advanced “Vega” architecture really shines2. You can increase your productivity by doing more than one thing at once. For instance, you can render a model in the background while working on another design at the same time. Doing this on a competitive product is nearly impossible, but with the Radeon™ Pro WX 8200, you can easily do this without any issues and have an average 13x gain in performance over the competition while doing heavy GPU multitasking.

With the “most stable professional graphics driver” certifications and optimizations on many of today’s most popular professional applications, and amazing performance to boot, the Radeon Pro WX 8200 is the best professional graphics card available today for under $10001. Pre-order yours now on newegg.com with targeted product availability in September.

Warren Eng is a Product Marketing Manager for professional graphics at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied. GD-5

Cinema 4D users now have a powerful new way to create photorealistic imagery, thanks to MAXON Computer’s recent work with AMD. First integrated in 2017, AMD’s Radeon™ ProRender is an intuitive physically based GPU render engine – and in Cinema 4D R20, it has grown even more powerful, with new features like motion blur, subsurface scattering and multi-pass rendering designed to help it slot into modern production pipelines.

Being based on OpenCL™, the open standard for GPU computing, Radeon ProRender will work with virtually any combination of CPUs and GPUs on both Windows® and macOS® (via support for Apple® Metal® 2). However, as a leading proponent of OpenCL, AMD’s professional graphics cards are specially optimized for the job. First integrated in MAXON Cinema 4D R19, Radeon ProRender enables artists to create photorealistic imagery quickly and intuitively, adjusting only a small number of settings.

“Radeon ProRender is a fast, highly interactive way to render images,” says Oliver Meiseberg, MAXON’s Chief Product Officer. “Artists can achieve the results they like much faster, and present changes to clients. It saves a lot of time iterating on designs.”

Created by Makoto Tamura using AMD Radeon™ ProRender for Cinema 4D™

In Cinema 4D R20, Radeon ProRender has been even more deeply integrated into the software, with a set of new features helping the renderer slot seamlessly into standard modern post-production pipelines. “In 2017, we wanted to get Radeon ProRender into our users’ hands. This year, we’re integrating it even more deeply into Cinema 4D,” says Andres Hildebrandt, MAXON’s Vice Director for Marketing. “In Cinema 4D R20, Radeon ProRender supports render layers, subsurface scattering and motion blur. Having those things is a gamechanger.”

The pivotal changes to Cinema 4D are empowering artists with the features they want, and the streamlined workflows they need. MAXON Computer’s and AMD combined effort have created a powerful and integrated render engine.

MAXON Cinema 4D R20 is available now, and you can see it in action by visiting AMD at IBC 2018 from September 14 – 18.

A few decades ago, the PC revolution brought about the mobile office. The evolution of the PC continues to amaze us with ever shrinking form factors that power ever complex applications. The time has come when thin and light will not power that graphics intensive application that we need to run with the performance that we’ve come to expect. Fortunately, one need not choose between performance and mobility as there already exists a solution that offers both and throws in manageability and security for free.

Virtual desktop infrastructures or VDI separates the heavily lifting of rendering an entire desktop and its applications with the relatively light task of displaying that desktop. This separation places the calculation intensive processing in the datacenter, allowing the desktop stream anywhere at any time. The problem of managing individual desktops across different locations simplifies the job of managing consolidated servers and the virtual desktops (virtual machines or VMs) running inside of them. The added benefit is that intellectual property created inside these virtual machines remain secure within the servers.

VDI needs GPUs, but GPUs make sense in datacenters only if they are scalable and the only way to scale a GPU is to virtualize it. AMD’s approach to the GPU virtualization resulted in the industry’s first hardware-based virtualization solution we now call MxGPU technology (short for Multi-User GPU). It is an elegant solution because of its simple implementation. Rather than creating another software layer to manage all the properties and attributes required to enable different users to share graphics resources, AMD designed a whole new class of GPUs and implemented these properties and attributes in silicon. Instead of devising proprietary methodologies in software, we utilized existing hardware standards to build MxGPU from the ground up.

At the core of the MxGPU architecture is a well-established and proven PCIE standard extension called SR-IOV (Single Root I/O Virtualization). This extension defines the specifications for a virtualizable PCIE device that can replicate itself on the PCIE bus. Rules governing what should be implemented in hardware are found in this extension which introduces the concept of the physical function or PF (the physical device) and virtual function or VF (virtual copies of the physical device). The remaining nuts and bolts of how the PF interacts with the VFs completes the MxGPU architecture and is an orchestrated effort between the hardware scheduler implemented in silicon, the host driver that interacts with the PCIE bus and the Radeon Pro driver that is loaded in the virtual machine.

The hardware scheduler is very predictable in its operation. With a very consistent cadence, it assigns the entire GPU’s resources to a particular VF at a particular time slice. Once the VF’s time slice has expired, the scheduler initiates a context save and the active VF relinquishes the GPU resources to the next VF in the queue. By implementing this “fair time slicing” model among the virtual functions, MxGPU asserts a high quality of service (QoS) for all the users sharing the same physical GPU.

It is not by accident that VFs will look and operate like mini physical GPUs once they are assigned to virtual machines. Each VF will carve out its own physical region of frame buffer or video memory. Each VF will appear with device IDs in the operating system’s device manager in its respective virtual machine. Apart from hardware enforced mechanisms implemented to a) restrict one VF’s access to another VF’s data and b) restrict the VF’s ability to change virtualization configuration parameters, the VFs are functionally identical to the parent PF. OpenGL®, DirectX® and even OpenCL® applications running on any AMD graphics cards can be directly ported to virtual machines with MxGPU enabled. To be exact, the same great Radeon Pro drivers developed for AMD’s professional class graphics cards can be used, unaltered, in a virtual environment with MxGPU.

The high QoS to all users sharing the same device, the hardware enforced data and access boundaries, the ability to use native professional graphics drivers and the simplicity of a hardware implementation through an industry standard, makes MxGPU an exceptionally suitable solution to deliver graphics in the datacenter.

Tonny Wong is the Cloud Graphics Product Manager at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third-party sites and references to third-party trademarks are provided for convenience and illustrative purposes only. Unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links, and no third-party endorsement of AMD or any of its products is implied. Use of third-party names or marks is for informational purposes only and no endorsement of or by AMD is intended or implied.

ALLPLAN prides itself on precision, and AMD further increases this with the recent independent certification from Allplan on AMDs entire professional graphics range.

For over 30 years, ALLPLAN has provided software solutions to architects and engineers. With over 20 languages and 240 thousand users, the company prides itself on providing specialist software. Allplan Architecture, is one such BIM tool for building design from the German company. Allowing you to work in 3D, or combined 2D and 3D. The strength of Allplan is its precision across the planning phases, whilst ensuring a secure data exchange with third parties. With a large user base, Allplan is a critical tool within the industry, where reliable graphics performance is key.

Enter AMD’s Radeon™ Pro Series, the professional range of graphics cards (GPUs) for today’s leading Architects and BIM specialists. The Radeon™ Pro range of GPUs offer acceleration and certification for a wide range of popular packages in 2D/3D design, visualization and complex simulation. This list continues to grow and we are excited to announce that ALLPLAN has now joined this list of over 80 applications fully certified and recommended by Independent Software Vendors (ISV’s) like Nemetschek.

“Architects and Engineers are embracing new design processes using 3D modelling technology. This process, known as BIM (Building information modelling), is transforming the construction industry and as a result, our clients rely on the performance of graphics cards to support their everyday design tasks. We are pleased AMD are long-standing partners, and that AMD graphic cards provides performance Allplan users can rely on.” says Kevin Lea, Senior Vice President Product Management ALLPLAN

Both companies understand that you may not be using the latest hardware, so to ensure productivity remains high, Allplan also certified the previous generation AMD FirePro™ professional GPUs, which were replaced by Radeon™ Pro graphics. This ensures maximum compatibility and peace of mind with the latest version of Allplan.

The ‘Certified and Recommended’ status for Allplan covers the entire range from entry level WX 2100 to the high-end WX 9100, as well as the Radeon ProDuo and Radeon Vega Frontier Edition. This offers extensive coverage for Allplan 2015 to 2018, on both Windows 7 64 and Windows 10, providing users with the optimum choice combined with AMD’s price to performance heritage.

This certification is particularly important when you consider Allplan is widely known for its unique multiple-viewport experience, allowing you to view and work within several floating views simultaneously, across multiple displays. No other piece of computer hardware is tested as much as the GPU when working in this way.

Allplan has two ways of displaying data within the viewports, with the advanced functionality, like hardware accelerated shadows, being reserved for OpenGL® 4.2 and DirectX®. (It’s worth noting all AMD professional GPUs offer OpenGL® 4.5 support as standard.)

Allplan uses a more recent version of OpenGL® than typically found in AEC software. As such this places more demands on the GPU, to keep up with its advanced viewport acceleration features, however if you’re not using a Radeon Pro GPU, you can disable these advanced features. By using AMD Radeon Pro graphics you ensure the GPU and software are working together, to drive better viewports and increase graphics performance for the operator when needed.

AMD has a strong commitment to industry leading graphics stability. According to a third-party assessment in 2018 commissioned by AMD, QA Consultants determined that “AMD has the most stable graphics driver in the industry” 1 . This assessment highlights AMDs continued commitment to driver enhancements. 1To download a more detailed version of the report, visit: qaconsultants.com/stabilityaudit.

Like ALLPLAN, Vectorworks has also had a longstanding, collaborative relationship with AMD, both on the CPU and GPU side, testing hardware for compatibility and performance.

As a 3D design and BIM program, Vectorworks makes heavy use of the GPU for the display of CAD and BIM graphics. It recommends at minimum a card with at least 1GB of memory. Luckily the entry-level desktop and mobile GPU from AMD professional graphics has twice this, with 2GB.

For very large projects, particularly when being displayed in modern, large, high resolution displays, users will benefit from Vectorworks multicore support. In the latest Vectorworks release, version 2019, Vectorworks has been enhanced even further, allowing multiple CPU cores to feed information to the AMD graphics card many times faster than before. This is a huge time saver when preforming photo-realistic renderings and make it possible to create smooth real-time walkthroughs of the model.

Vectorworks recommends you keep up to date with graphics drivers. The majority of display problems reported to their technical support department have been traced to older drivers. This is a good recommendation for all your BIM/CAD software and does not apply to Vectorworks only.

“As part of our focus on AEC, we are pleased to partner with ALLPLAN to deliver superior solutions to market. We know that quality and stability are what drive productivity for users. This certification ensures a robust experience, making AMD Radeon Pro and ALLPLAN the ultimate choice for your firm.” – Andrej Zdrakovic, AMD Corporate Vice President of Software and Platform Solutions.

In summary, this latest independent certification for ALLPLAN highlights AMDs commitment to tailoring the GPUs to the software you love, whilst ensuring stability and reliability remain key.

Few people push MAXON Cinema 4D™ harder than Günter Nikodim. Over the past five years, the freelance CG artist has worked on a series of ambitious visual effects sequences for Austrian movies and TV series, ranging from simulating floods and landslides to recreating the city of Vienna in 3D.

“Cinema 4D is the perfect tool for smaller businesses,” says Nikodim. “In most jobs, my highest priority is to deliver things quickly. Cinema 4D has a very streamlined workflow, and good connections to compositing software like Nuke.”

That makes Cinema 4D ideal for Cybertime, the boutique VFX house with which Nikodim often works. For 2016 TV mini-series Das Sacher: In Bester Gesellschaft, set around Vienna’s famous Hotel Sacher, Nikodim and four other artists turned around 200 VFX shots in two months, including a full CG sequence showing the city of Vienna in the background (see the title image): again, created entirely in Cinema 4D.

Created by Günter Nikodim using Radeon ProRender for Cinema R20

Recently, Nikodim has been pushing the stability of AMD Radeon™ ProRender, AMD’s physically correct GPU renderer, to its limits. In his work as a beta tester, he has been trialing the new Radeon ProRender features in Cinema 4D R20 on his own personal test scene: a production-quality model of a T-Rex dinosaur. Again, the asset was modeled, painted, rigged and animated entirely in Cinema 4D: Nikodim originally created it to test the sculpting tools in Cinema 4D R14 and has been updating it steadily ever since.

Created by Günter Nikodim to demonstrate the new Subsurface Scattering shader inRadeon ProRender for Cinema 4D R20

“The beauty of a GPU renderer like Radeon ProRender is that you have beautiful lighting immediately,” he says. “I could just change the HDRI file to experiment with how the model would look in different environments. You get a first impression extremely quickly.”

MAXON Cinema 4D R20 is available now, and you can learn more at the links below.

AMD continues its support of nurturing talent and knowledge within the Autodesk® 3ds Max® community by supporting a key user group in London.

A user group has always been one of the best ways to informally learn from the experience of others, particularly when using software you repeatedly rely on. This ethos remains at the heart of the 3ds London User group, and since its inception over 14 years ago the user group has gone from strength to strength.

From the beginning, the monthly meetup in central London has hosted presentations from many of the UK’s top studios working in architectural visualisation, visual effects, animation, games, architecture and immersive design, as well as most leading software brands in the M&E (Media & Entertainment) and AEC (Architecture, Engineering & Construction) industries.

For those not aware of this unofficial Autodesk® 3ds Max® focused meetup, the gathering attracts an average of 200 attendees all eager to share tips and tricks over a drink. This central London gathering occurs on the first Wednesday of every month allowing users to discuss ideas, technical methods and behind-the-scenes of key projects, whilst enjoying a relaxed and friendly traditional pub atmosphere near the iconic British Museum. Whilst traditional presentations form the backbone of the meetups, what drives people to keep attending is the wealth of knowledge and experience shared within the venues cellar bar.

Although the user group has moved around London in previous years it’s kept a strong following of some of the UK’s biggest brands and studios. The ethos of the user group is to be free to attend and for all abilities. This attitude has kept the sharing of information freely flowing while nurturing new talent within the local community (although it’s not usual for attendees to travel for a number of hours to attend.).

This ‘open to all’ principle is one that is close to AMDs own philosophy by helping to ensure users are not locked into proprietary methods. With it comes some challenges for the user group though, to keep serving its 1300 registered members, the user group needed support. With sponsorships already from a number of local companies, AMD has now become the technology partner of the user group, ensuring the community continues to expand and be supported during its bright future.

“As organizers of 3ds London, we’re thrilled to have the backing and support of AMD as a technology partner. This will allow us to build the best 3D meetup for our community while maintaining the friendly casual atmosphere everyone enjoys.”

– Simon Moir, 3ds London co-organiser.

It is not unusual to see AMD supporting the wider advancements of an industry, and recently became headline sponsor for the 2018 Annual CGarchitect awards, an online competition showcasing the best Architectural Visualisation talent in the world. You can read more about this here and explore the amazing winners’ work.

This commitment from AMD to supporting talent is echoed in the partnership of localised user groups like 3ds London. The ability to do so is of course driven by its hardware adoption and AMD has recently seen a renewed vibrancy within the community of 3D professionals, whether it’s from its ground-breaking CPU offerings like AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper™ or its high-end GPUs, like the AMD Radeon™ Pro WX 9100 graphics.

For rendering, the 32-core Ryzen™ Threadripper™ desktop processor is the World’s Most Powerful Desktop Processor1 offering blazing fast rendering speeds in industry standard plugins like Chaos Group V-Ray. Its professional range of GPUs continue to gain momentum with the launch of innovative technology like High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM) which offers up three times4 more bandwidth per watt than typical GDDR5 memory, and 94% less surface area5 ., which is hugely important when using large project files and textures within tools like Autodesk® 3ds Max®.

You may also be interested in a latest report into AMDs drivers. This new report2 from QA Consultants3, a Toronto-based software testing and quality assurance firm, has put six of AMD’s most popular cards to the test (high, medium and budget level cards) against the competitive equivalent. QA Consultants found AMD to have “the most stable driver in the industry.”

“The AMD team has recognised the huge potential that 3ds London has to offer all 3D enthusiasts and professionals working in the industry. It’s a fantastic networking event and having AMD as a partner will mean we keep raising the bar for our members.”

– Nigel Hunt, 3ds London co-organiser and SiNi software CEO.

To become a member and be kept informed of the next speakers at the 3ds London User Group, please register with them directly. There is a wealth of information and big plans on being able to share more of this content online with you. Connect with the user group here. The next meetup planned for October features an impressive line-up of speakers, with the likes of RealtimeUK making a welcome return to the group. You can see a full list on the previous meetup page link.

For those reading this further afield, you may like to explore the following interview on a high-end London Arch Viz studio and the challenges they face on projects ranging from complex animations to unusual VR. More stories will be added over the next few months. Read the interview.

AMD is proud to support the 3ds London User Group and continue supporting great talent.

Make sure you go and say Hello at the next meetup.

Jamie Gwilliam is a Sr. Market Development Manager for AEC at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied. GD-5

Today, we are releasing our latest quarterly AMD Radeon™ Pro Software for Enterprise driver, 18.Q4, which includes the new Day Zero Application Certification program, updates to the Remote Workstation feature introduced with the 18.Q3 driver (including support for more AMD Radeon™ Pro WX graphics cards), expansion of our unified “One Driver” with support for AMD Radeon™ Graphics, and productivity boosts for enterprise professionals with performance improvements in some key applications.

Additionally, there are updates to Radeon™ ProRender, our powerful physically-based rendering engine – we are adding real-time viewport ray tracing to the Radeon™ ProRender SDK for developers and the Radeon™ ProRender plug-in for PTC® Creo® is now available.

Day Zero Certification Program

All our Radeon™ Pro Software for Enterprise drivers are designed to be certification ready, and today we are introducing our Day Zero Certification Program, which means many professional applications will be certified before the latest enterprise driver is released. That means professionals can enjoy the latest features and improved performance of a newly posted enterprise driver along with the benefits of certification on the day the driver is released.

Enhanced Remote Workstation Features

With the remote workstation IP built into AMD Radeon™ Pro Software you can access the full GPU-accelerated experience of your AMD Radeon™ Pro WX graphics card from virtually anywhere using Citrix® XenDesktop® 7.15+ 2 and Microsoft® Windows® Remote Desktop Services (RDS). With the 18.Q4 driver, we’ve expanded support to include the Radeon™ Pro WX 4100, WX 5100, and newly released WX 8200 (in addition to the originally supported WX 7100 and WX 9100).

Simplified “One Driver” Deployment for ALL

Our customers say that for every enterprise user that creates content with professional graphics cards there are approximately ten who consume that content with consumer graphics cards 3. Because of this, we are now including AMD Radeon™ graphics support in the downloadable Radeon™ Pro Software for Enterprise 18.Q4 unified driver package to bring many of the benefits of Radeon™ Pro Software, such as stability and better security, to knowledge workers.

Performance Improvements

When compared to last year’s 17.Q4 driver (for both Media and Entertainment and Design and Manufacturing workflows), Radeon™ Pro Software for Enterprise 18.Q4 has up to 13 percent better performance in PTC® Creo® 4, up to 67 percent in Autodesk® Maya® 5, and up to 89 percent better performance in SPECviewperf® 13 Medical-02.

Real-Time Viewport Ray Tracing

For more realistic views of designs in professional application viewports, Radeon™ ProRender Real-Time Viewport Ray Tracing takes advantage of the speed of rasterization combined with the visual benefits of ray tracing and is now available in the Radeon™ ProRender SDK for developers to integrate into their application. Contact your AMD ISV Alliance manager for details.

Radeon™ ProRender for PTC® Creo®

Our new freely available plug-in enables designers and engineers to quickly and easily create incredibly rendered visualizations of their products when using PTC® Creo®. It also enables easy exporting of designs to Unreal® Engine for VR visualization when used with the AMD Radeon™ ProRender Game Engine Importer.

Alexander Blake-Davies, Software Product Marketing Specialist for Professional Graphics at AMD’s Radeon Technology Group. Links to third party sites and references to third party trademarks are provided for convenience and illustrative purposes only. Unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links, and no third-party endorsement of AMD or any of its products is implied. Use of third party names or marks is for informational purposes only and no endorsement of or by AMD is intended or implied.

We think there’s more to a creative experience than being glued to a cubicle. This challenged us to rethink what a workstation experience could be. An experience that’s the same as in the office: whether you’re at a customer site, traveling, or simply in the comfort of home.

More information about the HPE Edgeline EL4000 Engineering Workstation (EWS) can be found here and information about the HPE – Citrix Alliance here.

Creatives make their best when they’re free to explore. Where will you go?

Emil Salavat, Senior Software Product Management Specialist for Professional Graphics at AMD’s Radeon Technology Group. His/her postings are his/her own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied. GD-5

Dassault Systèmes® CATIA is one of the premiere software suites used for product development and product lifecycle management (PLM). It has been one of the the CAD leaders in automotive and aerospace in particular. Dassault Systèmes was one of the pioneers of computer-aided design (CAD), and its software has been used to design everything from passenger cars to military jets over the years.

The modern iterations of CATIA, and a host of many other design and simulation tools such as SIMULIA and DELMIA, are all rolled into Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform. These applications have complete interoperability with each other, enabling powerful end-to-end digital continuity and collaborative PLM solutions.

3DEXPERIENCE R2019x was officially released today, and AMD is excited to announce that its Radeon™ Pro WX-series graphics products have already been fully certified by Dassault Systèmes for the new release. For the second year in a row, AMD Radeon™ Pro graphics is primed and ready to power 3DEXPERIENCE on release day.

Certification is a critical requirement for enterprise customers, as it ensures that Dassault Systèmes has tested AMD’s graphics hardware and software for flawless operation with its application suite. 3DEXPERIENCE is a highly complex application, which is why AMD has partnered closely with Dassault Systèmes to guarantee that its graphics products deliver the rock stable functionality that the top 3DEXPERIENCE customers demand.

Antoine Reymond is a Sr. Market Development Manager for Manufacturing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied. GD-5

How today’s professionals and enterprise workstation users work is rapidly changing. Working remotely regularly is more common place and the adoption of new technologies is transforming CAD/engineering, visualization and prototyping, and content creation workflows. One tool that is an effective solution to help improve productivity and creativity is video capture. Using video to communicate ideas can help with collaboration, accelerates decision-making, enhances training, and improves customer communication.

Despite its obvious benefits, up until now incorporating video capture into professional workflows has been challenging, with existing solutions either not being designed for workstation use or having too high of a performance penalty. That changed with the release of Radeon Pro Software Crimson ReLive Edition last month, which includes Radeon Pro ReLive software that enables GPU-accelerated capturing and recording of professional workflows with minimal performance impact.

With AMD’s release of the Radeon Pro Software Enterprise Driver 17.Q1, Radeon Pro ReLive is now also available for users who require the performance, stability, and rock-solid reliability of our Enterprise Software along with the ability to capture their workflows for collaboration, presentation, training, and customer support.

These are the four key use cases of Radeon Pro ReLive we believe benefit workstation users the most, and we’d like to take you through each of these in more detail to show the benefits that our video capture solution, including its minimal impact on performance, can bring to your workflows.

Collaboration

Sharing ideas through collaboration is critical to the success of any creative endeavor, and video has become the ubiquitous medium for communicating ideas in the post-information age internet-based video sharing platforms. When working with others, video is often the most concise way to communicate your ideas — by using Radeon Pro ReLive to capture your workflow, you can enhance your colleagues’ understanding of what you hope to achieve and make it easy for them to help you when you come up against any roadblocks, accelerating the creative process.

A great example of how Radeon Pro ReLive can be used with a workstation media and entertainment application such as Autodesk® Maya®, would be to use ReLive to capture a short video highlighting all the main points of some new attributes you added to an animation so you can more effectively communicate your vision to your team, instead of having to explain it with text and screenshots in an email.

Because ReLive gives you up to 129 percent faster performance in Maya when recording at 60fps than when recording at 30fps with a screen capture application like TechSmith Camtasia1, your colleagues will be able to view your work with negligible quality or performance degradation. Similarly, if you are a designer working with a CAD solution such as Siemens® NX™, you’ll also find that ReLive enables much better performance (up to 148 percent2) when capturing compared to Camtasia.

Presentation

Effectively presenting your work to your company’s decision makers or to customers to update them on its progress is also an integral part of any project, and video can often be the most effective way to do this. With its ability to record audio and add a voiceover for additional explanation, using Radeon Pro ReLive to create the video for your presentation will allow for better decisions to be made, fast.

Complex detailed designs in applications like Dassault Systèmes SOLIDWORKS® can require a lot of system resources and if you want to record a video of your design to show to your senior management you’ll want to use a tool that nominally affects your PC’s performance; Radeon Pro ReLive allows for up to 196 percent better performance in SOLIDWORKS when compared to Camtasia.

Training

In any organization that produces physical products designed with CAD solutions, you’ll find that the majority of users simply need to view the CAD data, rather than have full access to the design software itself. At the same time, when sharing that data, you still want to be showing the actual original product design, rather than a less-detailed representation.

What better way to do this than to use Radeon Pro ReLive to record a video of the product that can be viewed on virtually any device instead of having users open the actual CAD files, which would require additional (and costly) application licenses? When working in the media and entertainment industry, ReLive can be used to record a particularly complex visual effect workflow so additional artists can be trained to duplicate it. The ReLive video capture of a product can also be used to help train external parties by showing them the actual product designs, too.

In addition to being able to record audio for a voiceover, Radeon Pro ReLive can also capture the output from your webcam in a repositionable and resizable window that can be used to add a human presence to the training videos you create.

Customer Support

Using Radeon Pro ReLive to provide customer support is a similar use case to training, in that you can capture and create videos to help with troubleshooting. But when it comes to support, it’s a two-way street, and to effectively resolve an issue the customer also must be able to clearly communicate what the problem is. If they are also using Radeon Pro Software, they can record the issue with ReLive and share the video so the problem can be quickly identified and the case can be closed. Again, the option to be able to record audio and a webcam overlay can allow customers to better communicate their problem to your support team.

Easy In-App Capturing of Professional Workflows

As is evident from the above, Radeon Pro ReLive, AMD’s powerful professional-grade solution for high-resolution screen capture and recording, is the ideal tool for workstation users who wish to improve their creativity and productivity through video capture to collaborate, present, train, and support.

Radeon Pro ReLive is free and integrated within Radeon Pro Settings and can record GPU-accelerated H.265 High-Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) video at up to 4K resolution4. H.265 video’s smaller (up to 44% smaller compared to H.264 AVC video5 when using ReLive) file size enables faster data transfers when sharing recorded workflows. ReLive includes an intuitive, easy-to-use interface, a repositionable application toolbar, and a resizable and repositionable webcam overlay.

You can read more about Radeon Pro ReLive and download it as part of our latest Radeon Pro Software Crimson ReLive Edition and the Radeon Pro Software Enterprise Driver 17.Q1 at http://www.amd.com/radeonprorelive.

Alexander Blake-Davies, Software Product Marketing Specialist for Professional Graphics at AMD’s Radeon Technology Group. Links to third party sites and references to third party trademarks are provided for convenience and illustrative purposes only. Unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links, and no third-party endorsement of AMD or any of its products is implied. Use of third party names or marks is for informational purposes only and no endorsement of or by AMD is intended or implied.

According to their website, “The South by Southwest® (SXSW®) Conference & Festivals celebrate the convergence of the interactive, film, and music industries.” Virtual Reality has become a big part of SXSW, and this year there are over 80 sessions dedicated to AR and VR. One of the most exciting aspects of VR is how this new medium is transforming the future of newsgathering and giving journalists dramatically new ways to tell stories.

In 2016, AMD collaborated with the Associated Press to tell stories in this new format, producing a series of 360 journalism pieces. At SXSW, the “Virtual Reality: The Next News Experience” panel is taking place today, March 14, from 3:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. at the Hyatt Regency Austin Texas Ballroom 5-7. The panel will feature AMD’s Head of VR and Software Marketing Sasa Marinkovic and AP’s Interactive Editor Nathan Griffiths launching a conversation covering the latest advances in immersive journalism, including an overview of AMD’s Radeon Loom 360-degree video stitching technology.

VR in Journalistic Storytelling

In addition to our collaboration with the AP, AMD has been working closely with other leaders in VR journalism. This past December we partnered with Time Inc.’s LIFE VR virtual-reality initiative and HTC to bring you the Remembering Pearl Harbor HTC Vive experience, and we worked with immersive journalism pioneer Nonny de la Peña’s Emblematic Group on the acclaimed Out of Exile: Daniel’s Story. Out of Exile was created with Radeon GPUs, and was nominated for a VR Journalism award at the 2017 Lumiere Awards.

In recognition of the important journalistic work these partners have created, we’ve put together a video featuring Nonny de la Peña, LIFE VR’s Mia Tramz, and AP’s Siri Abrahamson about the importance of how technologies like VR can help journalists tell their stories in a more impactful and immersive way.

According to Nonny de la Peña, VR is important for journalists because it gives them “an opportunity to really create a connection,” and helps create empathy because “if you feel like you are there, you feel like it can happen to you too.” Mia Tramz thinks that the “surprise and awe” that VR can generate is significant, and VR’s “sense of magic even in journalistic storytelling is really important.”

AP’s Siri Abrahamson relates that they are “constantly having to try to find new ways to tell stories and to share news,” and technology like VR “is what helps us to tell those stories better.”

Radeon Loom Adds Immediacy to Immersion

With immediacy being of critical importance to telling many news stories, using technologies to accelerate the creation process is paramount. By using Radeon technology Nonny de la Peña has been able to get stories out publicly quickly that would have previously taken “days and days to get out there."

Radeon Loom takes this to the next level — enabling a new breed of 360-degree video journalists to create the amazing VR journalism stories of tomorrow. While some news stories can wait, in today’s connected world that runs at breakneck speed, many cannot, especially those we consider “breaking news” events.

Radeon Loom addresses the formidable challenges of real-time live stitching of 360 videos, which will allow journalists to show even “breaking news” stories in 360-degree video, creating the ultimate immersive experience of events as they unfold. Imagine how impactful watching the upcoming March for Science and its 395 Satellite Marches in VR will be as they take place across the globe next month!

You can learn more about Radeon Loom at www.amd.com/radeonloom.

VR Lounge

Along with our VR in Journalism panel, AMD will also be showcasing several VR demos and experiences at our VR Lounge that runs from March 14 – 16 at SXSW.

The SXSW AMD VR Lounge is located in the JW Marriott, Room 402 – 110 E 2nd St, Austin, and opens from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Tuesday, March 14, and from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Wednesday, March 15 and Thursday, March 16.

Alexander Blake-Davies, Software Product Marketing Specialist for Professional Graphics at AMD’s Radeon Technology Group. Links to third party sites and references to third party trademarks are provided for convenience and illustrative purposes only. Unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links, and no third-party endorsement of AMD or any of its products is implied. Use of third party names or marks is for informational purposes only and no endorsement of or by AMD is intended or implied.

Virtual Reality is transforming the world as we know it and revolutionizing professional workflows for designers, artists, and creators, boosting creativity, enhancing collaboration, and improving productivity. With VR, architects, designers, and engineers can visualize and interact with their creations in ways they never imagined, accelerating design cycles.

Creative professionals in media and entertainment can create the next-generation of immersive experiences for their audiences, take previz to the next level, stitch 360-degree video in real-time, and create VR content in VR. Design and manufacturing professionals can integrate applications supporting CAD and 3D model game engine visualization in VR and virtual prototyping.

Create and Experience VR content — Using the Same Workstation

With Radeon Pro Software’s support for AMD LiquidVR™ technology and Radeon VR Ready Creator1 graphics cards like the Radeon™ Pro WX 7100, professionals can create VR content and assess the VR user experience all on the same workstation.

AMD’s innovative LiquidVR™ technology enables professional VR workflows by simplifying and optimizing VR application creation, enabling compatible Radeon™ Pro graphics cards to unlock features designed to work seamlessly with compatible VR headsets – features like Affinity Multi-GPU for a scalable experience with multiple GPUs, and MultiView Rendering for enhanced performance.

Radeon VR Ready Creator graphics cards and Radeon Pro Software – combined with the right hardware and applications – enables advanced visualization in VR for architects, designers, and engineers. Using tools like our newly announced Radeon ProRender Game Engine Importer, designers can easily import their geometry and materials from CAD applications into game engines such as Unreal Engine and view them in VR, for both internal reviews and to showcase their latest creations, facilitating the next-generation of customer and client engagement.

Being able to interact and manipulate their work with intuitive natural interactions when using suitable gesture-control enabled VR hardware, such as the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift with Touch, allows designers to virtually experience their creations without having to make expensive prototypes. Software like CAVRNUS’ VR solution for collaborative design, interaction, and education (which we demoed at SOLIDWORKS World 2017) eases the barriers that distance creates, allowing teams to interact with and evaluate their design decisions together.

Pro VR for Media and Entertainment

Animators, filmmakers, artists and other creative professionals can also benefit immensely from integrating VR into their workflows. Visual effects (VFX) artists can use VR to take previz to the next level and create immersive interactive virtual walkthroughs of highly complex scenes that can be viewed right on set.

Certified professional applications can be combined with the new breed of tools, such as Unity’s EditorVR, that allow VR content to be created within VR to create tomorrow’s interactive experiences. With Radeon VR Ready Creator graphics cards and Radeon Pro Software, filmmakers can stitch, edit, composite, and review in VR their immersive 360-degree video experiences without interrupting their workflow, all on the same workstation.

Utilizing AMD’s revolutionary Radeon Loom video stitching technology that enables real-time stitching of 360 videos, entertainment, sports, news, and more can be broadcast live in VR, allowing viewers to feel like they are really there. A great example of this was our live stream of the ‘Baahubali 2: The Conclusion’ Pre-Release Event, captured in 360 video using our groundbreaking bb360cc Camera and Radeon Loom Technology.

Alexander Blake-Davies, Software Product Marketing Specialist for Professional Graphics at AMD’s Radeon Technology Group. Links to third party sites and references to third party trademarks are provided for convenience and illustrative purposes only. Unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links, and no third-party endorsement of AMD or any of its products is implied. Use of third party names or marks is for informational purposes only and no endorsement of or by AMD is intended or implied.